Category Archives: Preview

Once more, we return to SpiralchainMAYSTRAVAGANZA! Our special, month-long celebration of Spiralchain awesomeness is a great way to enjoy the calm before the storm in the world of Spiralchain writing, and that makes it the perfect time to celebrate some of the amazing things we have in the pipeline for you!

Each Sunday in May, we’re sharing a new Spiralchain goodie. Whether it’s a sneak peek, an announcement, or a freebie, you can be confident that it will be something that will help expand our magnificent little universe in a new direction.

For this week’s MAYSTRAVAGANZA, may I present…

GATEMAKER AUDIOBOOK (Announcement)

Back in October, the AMAZING Kickstarter backers for Boltsender did the impossible–they smashed our funding goal in such a way that they made it possible for me to commission the recording of an audiobook version of Gatemaker!

Having an audiobook presentation of the series has always been a dream, but as you surely know, we are a small crew. The logistics and the startup costs just seemed too prohibitive to turn this dream into a reality. Couple that with the fact that our first forays into hiring a narrator yielded some less than stellar results, and I was a very crestfallen author.

Enter Justin Kolehart. Justin’s name may be familiar to some of you–he’s been a member of the ChainGang (the Spiralchain advanced reader team) since its inception back during the Mindshaper drafting days, and he is, without a doubt, one of the world’s premier authorities on the characters and worlds of the Spiral. He’s also an audiophile and a dear friend, and when things started to look most dreary for the future of the audiobook project, he stepped in and volunteered to take a swing at it.

His work has been nothing short of amazing. He’s been plugging away at this project for half a year and says that it’s been a lot of fun tackling this project. He’s excited for people to have another option for experiencing the storytelling of the Spiralchain series, and with that in mind… we are excited to announce right here, right now, that Gatemaker will be available through Audible in June! We can’t yet commit to which day in June, because of details beyond our control, but SOMETIME IN JUNE OF THIS VERY YEAR! Of course, the Kickstarter backers will get theirs first–just one of many perks of joining us for our annual pre-order pilgrimage (coming in October).

Take your very first listen to the audio with this quick sample!

If you want to learn more about Justin, follow him on Twitter @JKolehart !

Welcome back to SpiralchainMAYSTRAVAGANZA! Our special, month-long celebration of Spiralchain awesomeness is the perfect way to enjoy the calm before the storm in the world of Spiralchain writing, and that makes it the perfect time to celebrate some of the amazing things we have in the pipeline for you!

Each Sunday in May, we’re sharing a new Spiralchain goodie. Whether it’s a sneak peak, an announcement, or a freebie, you can be confident that it will be something that will help expand our magnificent little universe in a new direction.

For this week’s MAYSTRAVAGANZA, may I present…

A MAP OF ONUS (Freebie)

Some of you who have liked Spiralchain Series on Facebook may have seen my old map sketch of Onus, the principle fantasy world that sits squarely in the center of the action of the series. I am not a great artist though, and several of my attempts to turn my maps into something fit for human consumption have ended in tears.

Enter Bree Hill. Bree is an illustrator of my acquaintance who, once upon a time, was a student of mine at North High School in Des Moines. While those days are long behind us both, we have kept in touch from time to time, and I reached out to her earlier this year to ask if she would be willing to tackle a map of Onus for me to share with you all… and she said yes!

Our hope is for Bree to work on maps for each of the worlds (though Core and Nur are, for lots of good reasons, low on our priority list) over the months ahead. This was Bree’s first map project, and she agonized over getting it just right. I think it turned out great! If you are interested in any more of her work, you can check out her site here!

I have some plans for these maps as they get done, but for now, here’s a copy of the map of Onus (as it appears in Gatemaker–certain world-shaking events from later books are not incorporated into the map so that it remains spoiler-free). Thanks for joining us for this week’s MAYSTRAVAGANZA!

Danger lurks on Nur…

Of course there’s an eight-sided die.

The Shadowbender has been hard at work collecting resources…

The Alliance track shows the strength of the team…

The Fatewaker visits Murrod. Perhaps one of the Dragons can help?

Red resources–technology–is hardest to collect.

This rule book has been through many changes. Not done yet, but getting close!

Welcome to SpiralchainMAYSTRAVAGANZA! What is this made-up word, you ask? Why, it’s a special, month-long celebration of Spiralchain awesomeness! Why May? Well, truthfully, it’s because May is the month BEFORE heavy drafting starts on the next book in the series. It’s the calm before the storm in the world of Spiralchain writing, and that makes it the perfect time to celebrate some of the amazing things we have in the pipeline for you!

Each Sunday in May, we’ll share a new Spiralchain goodie. Whether it’s a sneak peak, an announcement, or a freebie, you can be confident that it will be something that will help expand our magnificent little universe in a new direction.

For this week’s MAYSTRAVAGANZA, may I present…

THE SPIRALCHAIN BOARD GAME (Sneak-Peak)

For the better part of two years, I have been working on a Spiralchain board game in partnership with my colleagues in Nightcandle Imaginations. The game is not quite done yet, but it is far enough along that we can start talking much more openly about it!

The game was designed to be fully cooperative–that means the players (1-8 of them) work together against the game, rather than against one another. It has a variable difficulty and currently plays in about 70 minutes with 10 minutes of setup time. Inspired by games like Pandemic, it plays out the epic quest of a group of Onusborn mystics to travel the Spiral of Worlds and collect the necessary technologies, sorceries, prophecies, and alliances to thwart the Foreverot before it spreads across the Spiral and destroys everything.

The game is 95% final in terms of mechanics, which means it is now entering the graphic design phase. Andrew Aguirre, who has provided all of the cover art for the series, is currently hard at work on designing something truly special. Don’t let my meager Microsoft Word-produced prototype fool you, this will look amazing when it is done!

As Andrew locks in art assets for the game, I hope to share more previews. When the game is complete, it will likely launch via Kickstarter and print in partnership with The Game Crafter. Before all of that, once the mechanics are 100% final, some backers of an earlier novel Kickstarter—Fatewaker, I believe–will be receiving a complimentary Print-and-Play version of the game!

OK. Enough words… let’s look at the game! Here are some shots from a game-in-progress featuring four players (A Fatewaker, a Shadowbender, a Bloodmender, and a Gatemaker) working hard to stop the Obliviates and warlords that are plaguing the eight worlds. By gathering resources, petitioning dragons, using their mystic abilities, and forging alliances, the players must defeat the Rot in its lair on Nur!

Danger lurks on Nur…

Of course there’s an eight-sided die.

The Shadowbender has been hard at work collecting resources…

The Alliance track shows the strength of the team…

The Fatewaker visits Murrod. Perhaps one of the Dragons can help?

Red resources–technology–is hardest to collect.

This rule book has been through many changes. Not done yet, but getting close!

It is my distinct pleasure to reveal the synopsis and title of the forthcoming SPIRALCHAIN: BOOK 3.

Going on-sale for pre-orders starting October 15th through Kickstarter, the third book pushes our story in exciting new directions and digs deeper into the mysteries that have been slowly accumulating since Jara first set foot upon Core at the beginning of GATEMAKER. The events of MINDSHAPER challenged our heroes in many ways, but things seemed to be, to an extent, peaceful when the last page was turned. That peace ends now.

Spiralchain: Metalbreaker

Can we know courage without first knowing fear? JC Stein was just sixteen years old when he threw away fear with a chain of magic bindmetal, but now he wants the fear back. He’s survived terrible events on four different worlds, but he’s beginning to think that somewhere along the way, he lost sight of who he really is. Almost a year after the final, fatal confrontation with the Obliviates, he finds himself consumed with the need to travel the Spiral of Worlds again–this time in search of the only people that can free him from his false courage to find out what kind of man he’s really become. He will have to convince his friends to travel with him back to Onus in search of the Metalbreakers, and to do this he must convince them that it is finally time to learn the names of the last three Children of the Line. The two quests will lead them to enemies both new and old, a world of endless winter, and an event that will change the Spiral of Worlds forever. Ruin awaits them all if JC cannot find the mettle beneath the metal.

It’s finally here! Learn more about the story of Mindshaper in this short video. Mindshaper releases in January, 2014, with pre-orders for autographed copies and other cool stuff starting November 15th.

The paperback of Gatemaker, which thus far has only been available from lulu.com, is now fully active in the retail stream and is eligible for purchase at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you prefer to get your book the old-fashioned way, it is highly unlikely to show up on the shelf at any particular store, but physical stores should be able to special order it. Check out all of your buying options on our Buy Spiralchain page!

Mindshaper

The second Act of Mindshaper is working its way through the Advance Reader team while the third Act gets some more author-specific edits–everything is proceeding on time for our January 1st release. Cover concept and art is in development with Andrew, and initial feedback on the book is strong. That being said, it’s time for the promised October 15th update–the book’s summary! This text is not necessarily 100% final just yet, but is very close. It will appear on the inside front flap of the hardcover and the back cover of the softcover. It will also serve as the general synopsis on all retail channels.

Every day, the people in our life try to define us—but do they really know who we are? Tatyana Harper is a college student with a complicated past and a future that she will do anything to assure. Six months ago, her world was turned upside-down when she discovered she was a Mindshaper, one of the very few in all creation able to connect with and manipulate the minds of those around her. Drawn into the struggle between the others like her—the Children of the Line—and the monstrous Obliviates that lurk in the shadows of her world, she must confront the echoes of her own past and determine who she is going to be. Tatyana and her friends must travel to an unknown world in search of the technology that will end this war, but what cost will this journey demand of her? Of all of them?

Mindshaper is Book 2 in the Spiralchain.

Mindshaper releases worldwide in Kindle, Nook, and iBooks formats January 1st, 2014. The hardcover version of the book will also be available exclusively through lulu.com or direct purchase from the author in January of 2014, with a paperback presentation in wide release scheduled for August of 2014.